I havent been on here for a while. Lots going on at the moment. Maternity pay has stopped but I dont want to go back to work. We have been frantically working out our finances, to see if its possible for me to stay at home until Christmas and then start job hunting in the New Year. DH wrote his car off and we have been trying to find him a new car, whilst paying for a hire car, which we could have really done without. I also started to get a little complex about what Ruby was and wasnt doing. I promised myself that I would never be bothered by everyone elses development but it seems I started too. Ive snapped out of it now though. Ruby still isnt sitting unaided but is rolling around and starting to show signs of pushing her feet to comando crawl. She is now 6 and a half months and weighs 17lb 6oz, and loves her dummy (something I always swore I would never use!) She is feeding really well and I am chuffed to bits about how it has progressed. She was poo'ing loads, so hv advised to move onto lumpy food with lots of finger food. The transition was perfect with no trouble at all. My question is what bottle to drop next. Ruby's routine is currently 7am bottle, 8am breakfast, 11.30 bottle, 12.30 lunch, 3.30 bottle, 5pm dinner, 7pm bottle. Recently either the half 11 or half 3 bottle has only been half taken and my gut is telling me to drop one. I think it should be the half 11, as I could then bring lunch forward to 12 and keep Ruby full in the afternoon ready for bed. Is anyone else thinking of dropping a bottle? xx

cariad is now down to only 2 bottles. one at lunch and one before bed. she kind of dropped them herself, the teatime bottle she started to refuse or would take about 30mins to drink 2oz so i decided to drop it and see what happened and it was fine. she has lots or ready brek for breakfast and a yog she was then only taking about 20ml at breakfast so i dropped that too, it was just a waste of time. she now has some cows milk in a beaker to wash the ready brek down.

give it a go dropping the 11.30 bottle and see what happens, if it doesnt work out you can always put it back in the following day

Hello. Gosh you do sound busy.

We've dropped one bottle as Ciaran seemed to be more than full all the time and eating tons so it seemed the right thing to do, and he doesn't miss it at all. I dropped the 11am feed as he's able to cope for the 4 hrs between breakfast bottle (and breakfast) and lunch.

Fingers crossed you can sort staying off work. I'm not looking forward to when the SMP stops in August. We'll just have to make do until November, but it will be a long few months, especially when we keep on having to fork out for so much.

Hi Tuppence, and welcome back!

Glad to hear that Ruby is progresiing well. It's so hard not to compare them to other babies their age, but all babies do things at their own pace and it's not a competition eh!

The last bottle I dropped with Skye about 6 weeks ago was the late morning/lunch one and she now only has 30ml/1oz with her lunch. This is sort of the Gina Ford timing/way to do things and seems to work perfectly for us. She only has full 6oz bottles at 7.30am/3pm/7.45pm now and just very small amounts with lunch at 12pm and tea at 5.30pm with a view to dropping the milk completely at lunch/tea and giving water/juice instead.
My SMP stops in 3 weeks now, and I am back to work 2 days per week in mid November : (
I hope you can work things out and stay at home for as long as poss too!

Iz & Skye x